


Who Will Give You Strength (When You're Not Strong)?

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [42]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, Sherlock thinks it's his fault, difficult childhood, mothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 11:31:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock gets a call from Mycroft. It's over. At last. But Sherlock can't tell John, still, about his Mummy, and all the ugly history leading up to this ending. Luckily, Mrs Hudson knows. Luckily, John's there for him, whether Sherlock knows he needs him or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Will Give You Strength (When You're Not Strong)?

**Author's Note:**

> I seem to be on a bit of a Sherlock-whump kick. So. Angst comfort. Loss and love. Families are messed up, but they are also what you make them.
> 
> This story references [Someone to Watch Over Me](http://archiveofourown.org/works/658990) where we first learn about Mrs Hudson accompanying Sherlock on his annual visits to Mummy.
> 
> The title is from Alter Bridge’s _Watch Over You_.

The phone call came in the middle of a Saturday morning. Sherlock ignored the ring tone, as was his habit, prompting John to answer it (as was his).

“John,” Mycroft was unsurprised to hear his brother’s flatmate instead of Sherlock, “Tell Sherlock…” There was a tiny hesitation, filled with an uncharacteristic anxiety. John wasn’t sure how he could identify the quality of that brief pause, but he could all the same. “Tell him it’s over.”

“What’s over?”

In his peripheral vision, John saw Sherlock raise his head from the microscope to watch him.

“He’ll know,” said Mycroft, “Tell him I will send a car on Wednesday morning. Ten o’clock.”

“You know how he feels about you and your cars,” said John, one eye on Sherlock’s thoroughly expressionless face.

“I know.” Another of those odd pauses. “Tell him all the same.”

John hung up and turned to Sherlock, who pre-empted the message with: “When?”

“Ten, Wednesday morning.”

Sherlock nodded and returned to his examination of the slides (showing malarial infected blood).

“Anything I can help with?”

“No,” Sherlock said, his voice bland and studiously neutral.

“I thought Mycroft sounded a bit odd.”

Sherlock switched slides. “A family matter,” he said dismissively.

There was a faint crack, the slide in Sherlock’s finger snapping suddenly in two. Sherlock hissed and pulled his latex-gloved hand away. John was at his side in an instant.

“Let me see.”

“I’m fine, John.”

“You’re mucking about with infected blood and glass just broke, Sherlock, I…”

“I’m _fine_.” Sherlock was impatiently pulling the glove off his hand. He flexed his fingers briefly, as though flicking away the clumsiness rather than showing John the lack of damage, then stood away from the table. In a voice gone stoically calm, he said: “I’m fine, John. The sample’s ruined, though. I need to see Molly for another.”

And he was gone.

In the following days, Sherlock was unusually quiet. It wasn’t really as though he wasn’t himself, but he was clearly making an effort to be that self. Making a point of complaining of boredom and the unimaginative criminal classes; making a point of silent sulks, though he clearly was not sulking. Brooding, maybe? Going somewhere in his head – somewhere John was not invited.

But Sherlock was not reacting with his customary curiosity at the reports from the field of Violet’s growth and cognitive changes during Mary and Nirupa’s trip to France for a brief holiday and an Engineering and Development conference.  Even the photo-illustrated story of how the six-month old Violet was winning the hearts of (and occasionally sicking up on) delegates failed to elicit more than a solemn yet distant observation that he sympathised with her reflexes.

It was unusual, being cut off like this; in quite this way. Sherlock was still prone to keeping too much to himself during cases, but this was like a wall. There hadn’t been walls between them in a long time. John didn’t know what to make of it, but his gentle prods at the invisible brickwork were at best ignored, at worst provoked brittle irritation.

After two days, John let it alone. Instead, he made tea and resisted small talk. He cultivated the silence that Sherlock seemed to require, but stayed present, reading or scribbling notes for blogs and songs while Sherlock remained curled on his chair or the sofa. When the silence felt too hollow, when Sherlock stared unseeing at the wall for too many hours, John played his guitar: quiet melodies, meant to soothe. The music seemed to reach Sherlock in a way that words and tea and searching looks didn’t.

Tuesday night, Mrs Hudson was waiting in the vestibule when John came home with a few necessities: milk, tea, biscuits, batteries, guitar strings, hydrochloric acid. John followed her into her flat, bringing her the promised packet of loose-leaf Darjeeling tea.

“He hasn’t told you, has he?” was Mrs Hudson’s opening comment.

“No.”

She sighed. “I suppose he doesn’t really know how, after all this time.”

John put his shopping on her table and waited. Mrs Hudson put the kettle on. Opened the new tea. Measured out three spoonfuls into the teapot.

“His mother passed away,” Mrs Hudson said.

John frowned, pursed his lips. The infamous Mummy. Spoken in the present tense, when she was spoken of at all, which wasn’t often. Well, if anyone knew about problematic parents, it was John Watson. “Hell.” He frowned. “What do you mean, he doesn’t know how after all this time?”

“She’s been in… well, in my day they would have called it an asylum. They have kinder names for it these days, but it amounts to the same thing.”

The kettle boiled and Mrs Hudson turned to fetch it and pour the water into the teapot.

John sank into a kitchen chair, absorbing that news.

“How long?” he asked, after she had stirred the leaves and put the lid back on the pot to brew.

“I’m not sure. Long before I first met Sherlock. Perhaps twelve years? It could be more, but not much less, though I understand she was… unwell, for a long time before that.”

“He never told me.”

“No,” she agreed, sitting opposite him. “He visits… visited her once a year. I’ve been going with him, these last few years.”

“But…”

“I think,” she said, then paused to consider. “I think he didn’t want you to know her as she had become. She used to be a very elegant, very intelligent woman, I believe. Prone to terrible dark moods, though. And, well, my understanding is that she tried to… I’m sure you know what I mean. She didn’t kill her body, but there was brain damage and…” Mrs Hudson fell silent for a moment, her pursed lips tightening in what might have been disapproval or pity. “She doesn’t… didn’t really know him, or his brother, most of the time. And some days when she did, she was terrible to him. She had better days, I suppose, but mostly. Mostly they were bad days.”

She poured the tea while he thought about that.

“The funeral’s tomorrow,” said John.

“I know. I said I’d go with him.”

John inhaled. Held the breath. Let it go. “Good.”

“Will you?”

“He didn’t want me to know.”

“That doesn’t mean he was right to not tell you.” Mrs Hudson’s mouth was prim, her eyes both stern and appealing.

John lifted the teacup, blew on the surface and watched it ripple. “It’s ten o’clock for the car. We’ll meet you downstairs.”

Mrs Hudson nodded, satisfied, and they drank their tea in thoughtful, companionable silence.

At 9:45 Wednesday morning, Sherlock was dressed in one of his dark suits. He didn’t look much different to usual. A little paler and quieter, maybe; which was quite a feat.

When John came downstairs, dressed in a dark suit of his own, Sherlock glared at him. John ignored the glare, stopping at the mirror to check that his tie was straight. He saw Sherlock’s reflection assessing him. Met his reflected eye with nothing but the faintest nod.

Sherlock started for the stairs and John followed him. At the foot of the stairs, Mrs Hudson waited. She patted Sherlock’s arm and followed him out to the street, John at their heels.

Into the waiting sedan, then. Sherlock sat by a window, staring out at London but not, apparently, seeing it. Mrs Hudson sat beside him, her hand tucked through the crook of his arm. From time to time she patted his wrist, almost absent-mindedly. John sat on her other side, lost in thought, in memories.

The last time he and Mrs Hudson had gone to a funeral together, it had been Sherlock’s. The thought gave him the briefest swoop of nausea and he held his breath against it, then let the air ease out of him, slow and steady. The memory still hurt, but it had been supplanted since. He could let it go.

Not the older hurt. His mother’s funeral, distant and real. Only one miracle per lifetime. Still. One more than anyone else generally got.

He wished Mary were here.

John felt a gentle touch, glanced down to see Mrs Hudson patting the back of his hand, too. He gave her a small smile. He glanced at Sherlock, still looking out of his window. Perhaps watching them in the reflection.

The car drove for a long time. When it pulled up, Sherlock alighted first, stopped to help Mrs Hudson out, paused while John joined them. They walked across the grass then, to the small gathering in the elegant little cemetery.

Mycroft was there, with Sally. Her pregnancy was started to show, a low-slung swell, barely discernible to anyone who didn’t know. A wordless look passed between the brothers. John, more practised than most with the secret language of Holmeses, saw regret and sorrow, and more complex things, hard to pin down. Compassion, perhaps, on Mycroft’s side, and relief. On Sherlock’s side, a hard to reconcile sense of remorse. Something about it looked as though it belonged on a much, much younger face. A child’s grief and almost bewildered guilt in an adult’s eyes.

John found himself thinking: _Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault_.

As the service proceeded, Sherlock stood silently by the grave, his face a bland mask, eyes blank.

Sensing movement, John glanced at him. Down. Mrs Hudson, on Sherlock’s left side, still had her hand through his arm, squeezing it softly from time to time.

On this, his right side, Sherlock’s hand flexed. Clenched and opened, clenched and opened, clenched and opened.

John shifted slightly, his feet braced in a soldierly stance. He’d had his hands folded respectfully in front of him, but now he quietly reached out to touch the back of Sherlock’s flexing hand with his fingertips. He slid his fingers and palm over the suddenly stilled hand, and held it.

A pause, and Sherlock’s hand opened. Turned. Held. Tightly. Too tightly.

John squeezed back and kept his eyes on the service.

Saw that Sally held Mycroft’s hand, too, her thumb rubbing small circles across his whitened, clenched knuckles. Mycroft, like Sherlock, was otherwise impassive, but for that hand, holding too tightly to anchorage.

The service ended and they waited a moment. Two. Ten.

People came past. Old people, mainly, with hard faces and looks that disapproved, and told Mycroft and Sherlock that they were sorry for their loss. Mycroft managed to murmur a reply or two. Sherlock didn’t speak.

John rubbed his thumb over the back of Sherlock’s fingers. _I’m here. As long as you need._

And then it was over, and all but they, Mycroft and Sally were gone. Sherlock finally let John’s hand go.

“Don’t expect me at the wake,” Sherlock said to Mycroft.

“I didn’t.” Mycroft was unusually gentle.

“Good luck with the vultures.”

“Oh, I shall be fine.”

“In your element.”

“These vultures are certainly nothing new to me.”

Sherlock nodded, once at Mycroft, once, in a slightly awkward fashion, at Sally. Then, with Mrs Hudson still on his elbow, John close by his other side, they walked back to the car.

At Baker Street, Mrs Hudson stretched up to give Sherlock a hug. Sherlock leaned into the embrace.

“Thank you,” he said, an almost inaudible rumble into the top of her head, and she patted his back as she held him.

“You’re a good boy,” she said.

When he straightened up, his expression was sceptical.

He started up the stairs ahead of John, and John took the opportunity to tug loose his tie, stuff it into his coat pocket, then take off the coat, as he followed. Once inside, he flung the garment over the back of his chair and turned to Sherlock.

Sherlock stood in front of their closed door, perfectly still – at first glance. John could see the tremors, though. Faint. In Sherlock’s hands and his shoulders, shaking partly from the effort not to shake. At John’s scrutiny, his mouth pursed.

“We used to vie for her affection. Or her attention, at least. To see who was her favourite that week.” He blinked. “Now I think about it, I don’t suppose she had a favourite, then. It’s possible she liked us equally. Or disliked us equally. Even after our father…” The thought stumbled to an end, refusing completion. Sherlock took a sharp breath through his nose. “Of course, I was only a child, when I… It’s not that there was intent to be cruel on my part. My understanding was insufficiently sophisticated at the time. I didn’t… comprehend. I didn’t. Mean. Mean to.” Sherlock swallowed on the words that wouldn’t come. He tried again. “And it’s not that she was unkind, but she was not a demonstrative woman. It was hard to tell what she was thinking. I believe she worked hard to disguise what she was thinking. From me, especially.” He scowled. “Such sentimental rubbish,” he said, scathingly. And then he said: “It’s not as though she was unkind, before she was. Ill.  Before the. She took…drank the. Before. ”

With a quiet, “Here,” John stepped close, wound his arms around Sherlock’s shoulders and drew him down. He’d expected resistance, but instead, Sherlock folded down, arms winding about John’s waist, face pressing into John’s neck. He gave up fighting the shakes and clung on. Too tight.

John held tighter to him. For long minutes.

Not letting go, Sherlock’s ragged voice muttered: “I’m not sure she would have liked you, back then. I suspect you would have stood up to her, like you do with Mycroft. I’m not sure she would have approved.”

John thought how much his own mother would have liked Sherlock, if only for the fact that John loved him. She would have had him around for tea. Given him jumpers that she knitted herself. Hugged him. Berated him. She’d have mothered him. Fiona Watson had always been an all-inclusive motherer.

“She’d have liked me,” John asserted, with the gentlest humour, “Mums do, you know. They think I’m a good influence.”

That startled a snort of surprised laughter out of Sherlock, which pleased John. “They don’t know you at all well,” said Sherlock.

“No, but I have a very civilised veneer,” John said.

Sherlock, still holding tight, laughed, and after a minute the laughter felt like something else, for just a moment or two, and John’s shirt collar was damp, he knew, but Sherlock showed no inclination to move and John had no inclination to make him.

“Actually,” said Sherlock, a little hoarsely, “She would have. She would have liked you.”

John, despite the tightness of his grip, managed to hug Sherlock just a little harder.

“She’d have liked you too,” he said.

Another gulping, shivering, not-quite-laugh.

“If she’d known you,” John persisted, “If she’d stayed to know you, she would have known that you are amazing. And if she didn’t realise it straight away, I’d have told her. About the things you’ve done. The lives you’ve saved. The lives you’ve _changed_ ,” and here he squeezed harder yet, “I’d have made sure she knew the man you’ve become. That you are extraordinary. She’d know that.”

The shaking subsided. Sherlock’s breathing evened out. After a while longer, he stood away from the hug, but didn’t quite let go. His hands on John’s shoulders, he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to John’s forehead.

“She would know that. About you, too. That you are.” Sherlock blinked, his lashes damp, “That you are extraordinary.”

Instead of protesting with humility, John simply patted Sherlock’s ribs. Sherlock took a deep breath and seemed suddenly to be his normal self.

“Glasses, John!” he announced, turning away, waving kitchenwards, before he began to rummage in one of the bookshelves. John, correctly interpreting Sherlock-speak, dug out a couple of small glasses, the remainder of a set of six. (The rest had all been destroyed, one way or another, to John’s immense irritation, in experiments involving toxins, body parts and temperature extremes.)

Sherlock crowed with triumph as he returned with a bottle of what turned out to be very old, very expensive, very good Scotch. Grateful clients were sometimes very grateful indeed.

Sherlock poured out two generous measures.

“To Adeline Holmes,” he said.

They clinked glasses, drank. Sherlock poured two more glasses.

“To Fiona Watson,” he said, with a small smile, because even mired in grief, he had read John today, and _knew_.

John grinned. “To Fiona Watson. Who would have loved you, you know.”

“That seems.” Sherlock stared at John, as though considering his protest, then changing his mind. “Quite likely, actually.”

John’s grin widened. He raised his glass, and they both downed the measure in a gulp.

Sherlock poured a third. He paused for a moment, looking at the glasses, then down at the floor, through it, to the flat below.

“To Meredith Hudson,” he said quietly.

“To Mrs Hudson,” agreed John.

More toasts may have followed, but John’s phone rang. John meant to ignore it, but the personalised ring tone signalled it was Mary calling, and Sherlock pounced on it.

“Yes!” he almost carolled into it as he dodged away from John’s brief attempt to claim the instrument, “Right away. _Hurry_.” John thought he heard Mary’s wonderful laughter before Sherlock hung up.

Sherlock swooped into the kitchen, throwing open cupboards and apparently dissatisfied with the contents, he threw open the door to yell down the stairs: “ _Mrs Hudson_!” A beat for the reply that John couldn’t quite hear and then, “Violet is coming home with her mothers! Do you have any of those biscuits Nirupa likes?”

John could hear Mrs Hudson’s shouted reply. “You mean the Jaffa Cakes? I have a new pack…”

“Bring those. And those things Mary likes. The cheesy things.”

“How long till they’re home?”

“Half an hour. No. Forty minutes, with traffic from the airport.”

“I’ll bake some scones.”

“The chive ones.” It was an order rather than a request.

“Yes, dear.” John could hear the indulgent merriment in Mrs Hudson’s voice.

Much, much later that day, when evening had fallen and Mrs Hudson had gone home, and Mary and Nirupa had both fallen asleep, propped up against each other on the sofa, John dropped soft kisses on one forehead, then the other. He drew a blanket over the tired travellers and padded upstairs to his room, where Sherlock had taken Violet to put her down for a sleep.

The cot was empty. Sherlock stood at the narrow window in the dark room, looking out at the night sky, still in his black trousers and white shirt from the morning, but without the jacket, in his stocking feet. Violet was in his arms, drooling sleepily into the soft silk, one little fist wrapped tightly in the nearest of Sherlock’s curls. Sherlock moved as though to hand the child over, but John shook his head. He stood by them at the window, touched his sleeping daughter’s back with his fingertips, raised them a little further to touch her hand where it held tight to Sherlock’s hair, perforce giving Sherlock a gentle pat as well.

“I will never harm her, John,” said Sherlock solemnly, a hushed and desperate promise in the moonlight, “By word or deed.”

“I know. _We_ know.”

Sherlock closed his eyes and ghosted his nose and lips over Violet’s hair.

“Just so you’re clear,” said John, “She’s yours, too. Two mums, two dads. This is a big family, Sherlock. You’re right in the middle of it with us.”

“Sentimental claptrap,” said Sherlock, but he was smiling. He pressed a kiss to the crown of the baby’s head.

John slung an arm across Sherlock’s shoulders and the two of them gazed at Violet, muttering little noises in her sleep.

 


End file.
